by Jeff Grubb
Mika’s face drew in on itself, the Hutt biting his lower lip. Mander stepped back into the light.
“My brother seems intent on confirming his control of the clan,” said Mika. “That control does not seem to include me.”
“So it appears,” said Mander.
“Vago wants me to hide out in our estate until Zonnos calms down.” Mika did not seem to like the idea.
“But what if Vago is working with Zonnos?” said Mander.
“That has occurred to me as well,” said the small Hutt. “It is a very distressing thought. My family dynamics have been always … strained.”
Mander looked around. Reen and Eddey were checking ahead for any ambushes, and Angela Krin had fallen behind to see if they had been followed from the Headache Bar. The Jedi said, “Anything you can tell me may help us.”
“We are a family, but we are an organization as well,” he said. “Popara was both our father and the patron of all those in his employ. Some Hutt leaders treat this as if they were invested royalty, but Popara, may his spirit rest quietly, took the concerns of his workers very seriously. If you were in my father’s employ, he demanded much, but he rewarded good service as well.”
“There were only the two of you as his heirs,” said Mander.
“The only two still living,” said Mika, and was quiet for a moment. Then he added, “I never knew most of my siblings. Hutts live a very long time, but the nature of their lives makes death by natural causes an unlikely occurrence. And given our biology—you know about that, as scholar?”
“You can be of either gender,” said Mander.
“That is putting it succinctly,” said Mika. “But yes, and part of it is that our fertility rate is very low. Perhaps damage from when we lost our first world, Varl. So descendants are normally a problem, and my father favored me, as the baby of the family.”
“And you think that might create problems with Zonnos?” asked Mander.
Mika puffed the air out of his cheeks in desperation. “Perhaps. Zonnos is the heir, and he’s a Hutt’s Hutt. The other families, the Council of Elders, would approve of him. He’s not the sharpest vibroblade in the armory, as you’ve noted, but he has that something that others respect in our political circles.”
Mander watched the little Hutt and felt sympathy, even pity for the creature. He was not a typical Hutt, and was afraid of being punished for it. The Jedi looked around, but things were still quiet. It was a peace that was sure not to last. “What can you tell me about Vago?” he asked.
Mika shook his head. “She’s dedicated to my father. She makes things work. She’s always been more dedicated to the family shipping business than Zonnos ever was. And she has always been very kind to me, teaching me about the business and encouraging me to explore on my own. Trips like the one to Endregaad were with her urging. I think that she feels that if something happened to Zonnos, I should know enough to handle myself in negotiations. I’d hate to think that Vago is wrapped up with this.”
Angela Krin joined them at this point. “Nothing behind us. We can still hide at the CSA safehouse. Find our own way offplanet. We can protect you, Mika.”
Mika looked at Angela, and Mander imagined he could see the wheels spin in the young Hutt’s mind. Accepting the CSA’s aid would be a safer choice, but carry with it additional obligations. Plus, not responding to Vago’s offer to help might cost him an ally. If Vago was truly an ally at this point.
“You want to go to Vago,” said the Jedi, trying to form the words as a question but failing. He added, “You should not go alone.”
The Hutt nodded. “Yes,” he said, “we should contact Vago. But we should be careful. The rendezvous spot is only a couple of levels above us.”
Angela Krin looked like she would disagree for a moment, but then furrowed her brow and nodded. Mika said, “Should I disappear, don’t let Vago get away with this.” Again, she nodded, but this time more slowly. Mander wondered what that promise would entail.
The group set out again, and the young Hutt proved more than capable in keeping up with others. As they ascended, more citizens of the depths appeared in the courtyards and arcades, and if they thought it odd to see a Hutt traveling with his retinue so deep beneath the spires, none said anything about it. There was still no open sky above them, but as they climbed, Mander felt a weight being lifted from his shoulders.
The shuttle pad was set along the length of a shaft bored through the towers and slums of the Smugglers’ Moon, with landing pads jutting out at different levels. Beneath them, the shaft continued down to the blast pits. Far above them a retractable dome had been pulled back, and Mander imagined he could see open sky at the very top. Catwalks and cross-supports turned the passage into a twisted maze for any pilot.
Cradled on the pad was a squat shuttle of SoroSuub make. A Quarren leaned against one of the support struts, sucking on a death stick. He caught sight of the five of them, waved, and entered the shuttle to make final preparations. The dented H-3PO unit emerged and waddled toward them.
Mander and the others walked out onto the narrow bridge to the landing pad as the droid approached. Mander realized he had been holding his breath and let out a relieved sigh. Eddey and Reen seemed to relax as well.
The droid came up, and in a conversational voice said, “Zonnos made me lie to you. You should run now.”
A squad of Wookiees tumbled out of shuttle, bellowing and brandishing blaster rifles and stun net projectors. Reen cursed and brought up her carbine, while Eddey spun around and shouted, “Pull back!”
The two forward Wookiees each dropped to one knee and aimed their stun nets. Microfilament netting blossomed from the barrels like greedy flowers ringed with electrified weights. Mander moved one aside easily with the Force, but the other found its mark and draped over the surprised Mika. With a ragged growl of pain the young Hutt slumped, small bolts of lightning sparking his light green flesh from the microfilaments.
They were halfway back to the blast doors when a group of Rodians boiled out from around the corner, armed with blaster pistols and stun batons. They cut off the retreat, laying down a withering pattern of fire. Mander leapt in front of the others, lightsaber drawn, and batted away the charged pulses of ionic energy as best he could. Behind him, Eddey and Angela Krin returned fire, dropping a Rodian with every other shot.
“Think they’re working together?” shouted the CSA agent.
“I doubt it!” the Bothan shouted back. “I think the Wookiees want to take us alive. The Bomus do not seem to be as discerning.”
Mander shot a glance over his shoulder and realized that Reen was still back along the platform, closer to the shuttle. She had taken up a position behind the stunned form of Mika, and was blasting the charging Wookiees.
She dropped two of them in quick succession, but the third was on top of her, and brought the butt of his blaster hard across her face. The Pantoran dropped like a rock.
“Reen!” Mander shouted.
“Look out!” bellowed Eddey. “They have a detonator!”
Mander looked back as the depleted Rodian force rolled a small thermal device toward them. He reached out with the Force and tried to shove it off the landing pad, out into the empty space of the launch tube itself.
He almost succeeded.
The detonator spun under his direction, teetering at the very edge of the pad. Then it exploded.
The thermal detonator became a brilliant red-white star for a moment, and half the pad disappeared. The stress rocked the rest of the landing structure, and the Wookiees behind them fell down. In the shuttle itself, Mander could see the Quarren pilot fighting with the controls, and the side thrusters came to life along the sides of the hull. The shuttle took a sharp lurch off its cradle and began to tip into the abyss beneath them.
Then the ground fell away beneath Mander’s feet. Without thinking, he leapt for the shadowy catwalks above. But they were too far and he realized that he would miss them.
A narrow, pale
yellow arm, clad in rags, reached out of the darkness and grabbed Mander’s outstretched arm. Looking up, Mander saw the face of the Evocii leader.
“Sometimes you fight, sometimes you run,” said the leader in broken Basic. “This time you run if you want to fight later.”
Mander looked around and saw that Eddey and Angela Krin were in the hands of other Evocii, being pulled to safety at upper ledges. Behind and below them, the pilot was trying to save his craft from the crumbling landing pad, firing his landing thrusters to stay stable. He was failing.
Two of the Wookiees were protecting the fallen forms of Mika and Reen, while the others now bunched along one side of the shuttle, pushing it off the side of the platform. Unless the pad was lightened, it would collapse into the blast pits.
The Quarren at the controls panicked now and the main engines flickered for a moment. If they fired up, the entire pad would be incinerated, killing them all. The Wookiees let out a howl and pushed with all their might. The shuttle pitched over the edge of its cradle and for one brief moment Mander thought the pilot could regain control. Then it fell like a stone from heaven, spinning as its thrusters failed along the far side, spiraling into the depths.
His Evocii rescuer shoved him through the safety of a blast door as he heard the distant thunder of the crash. He wondered if the debris and flames would channel this far up the shuttle tube. Then the blast door safety engaged and the durasteel doors shut behind him with a final clang.
CHAPTER
TWELVE
TRIAL AND TERROR
“It is not your fault,” said Eddey.
“I could have gotten rid of the thermal detonator,” said Mander. “I could have saved them both.”
They were standing on the balcony of the CSA safehouse. It was surprisingly accommodating for a surreptitious hiding hole, situated halfway up one of the skytowers of the Nar Shaddaa arcology. From this viewpoint, they could look out over a wide swath of lower construction and ruins, and see the bulk of the Anjiliac tower, nestled against the structures of other powerful Hutt clans.
Which may have been a reason why the CSA maintained this apartment in the first place, Mander realized. To keep an eye on the Hutt clans. The long night of Nar Shaddaa had passed, replaced with the gray, polluted day.
The Evocii had brought them here, under Angela Krin’s orders. Now half a dozen of the warriors were camped out in the main room, some noticeably afraid of being this far above their normal haunts, the others raiding the larder and putting food aside to take to their families down below.
Angela came out to join the others on the balcony, apparently unconcerned that so much of the CSA resources were going to the refugees. Mander had an errant thought and wondered what her expense account would look like after this.
“I’ve found a way offplanet,” she said. When she noticed the questioning look on Mander’s face, she explained further. “I called in a couple of corporate favors. We can leave before local nightfall—which is only forty hours away.”
“We have to rescue Reen,” said Eddey. Mander hesitated for a moment, and then nodded.
“That would be your choice,” said Angela Krin, looking at Mander. She already knew better than to argue with the Bothan. “But you are more likely to find out about the Tempest spice if you’re alive. Which you will not be if Zonnos finds you.”
“We have to rescue Reen,” said the Bothan again.
Angela Krin shook her head. “Losses happen, even in well-planned operations.”
Which this was not, Mander thought. He looked out over the sprawling multilevel traffic of the lunar city.
“Besides,” continued the lieutenant commander, “we don’t even know if she’s still alive.” Her eyes lost focus for a moment, lost in thought, “Or if Mika is alive, either.”
“She’s alive,” said Mander, pointing at a signblimp.
The face of Zonnos the Hutt sprawled along the light-pips of the signblimp, and the bass voice of the Hutt thundered over the din of the traffic. “The assassin of my father has been captured!” translated the droid pilot, as the picture changed to that of Reen, battered but alive. “She will be executed at forenoon, in two hours’ time. The trial and execution will be broadcast on these blimps. Watch the worthy demise of the murderer of my father, and see the firm justice of the Anjiliac clan!”
“He is solidifying his power,” said Angela Krin. “Telling the other Hutts he is fit to lead. It is theater, nothing more.”
“Theater that will kill Reen,” said Mander. “No mention of Mika, though.”
“He’s probably a prisoner in the skytower,” said Angela Krin. “Were he dead, that charge would have been added to the accusations against Reen as well. But if anything happens to him, I swore that Vago would pay for it.”
Mander looked at Angela, and saw emotions cross her face in quick succession—fear, anger, and frustration—before it smoothed out again into the calm demeanor of a CSA officer. She was willing to see Reen die, but swears vengeance on Mika’s behalf.
“We have to rescue her,” said the Bothan again.
Angela blinked, then looked at Eddey, then at Mander. At last she said: “All right, we have to rescue her. How?”
“Do you have an aircar among your corporate resources?” Mander asked.
Angela thought a moment, then nodded.
To Eddey, Mander said, “Can you fly it?”
“I can fly anything,” said the Bothan.
“You have a plan?” asked Angela.
“I do,” said Mander, “but I need one of your blaster carbines.”
The master assassin, the slayer of the beloved Popara Anjiliac, accused and all but convicted of her crime, stood apart from the assembled court, chained on a lit platform. She was on display, to be holorecorded and transcripted until the inevitable judgment was passed upon her.
Reen Irana occupied the center of attention of this media circus, and she was not happy about it.
The holocam droids swung on their pivot gimbals, their tricloptean lenses capturing the infrared and ultraviolet spectrums for those aliens who preferred their media in those ranges. At the broadcast booths, labels, news crawls, tickers, chyrons, logos, and commentary would be added in a variety of languages for personal consumption. The bulk of the live broadcast would be in Huttese, of course.
The penthouse had been reformatted as a court of Huttese law. Screens had been dropped over most of the panoramic windows, and those panels that had been damaged by the earlier blasterfire had been replaced with temporary sheets of lightweight durasteel. The barrier between Popara’s private study and the feast hall had been removed, along with its protective force field. A holoprojector in the corner displayed the resplendent image of the victim, Popara Anjiliac, looking wise and venerable and completely unexploded.
In the center of the room stood the accused, chained by thick links of plasteel. Her face was bruised from injuries supposedly sustained during the thrilling capture, where, according to the press release, she was kept from killing Mika the Hutt only through the personal efforts of Zonnos’s own heroic Wookiee guards. Even so, she destroyed a shuttle and crippled a vital set of shuttle tubes. No charges were brought against her for these crimes, as they paled beside the charge of Hutticide. And of that crime she was already found guilty. All that remained was holding the trial and carrying out the sentence, as determined by Zonnos Anjiliac.
The lift tube doors opened and Zonnos entered with his retinue. Mika was not there, nor Vago, but Popara’s robed Twi’lek handmaidens now moved demurely behind their new master. The Wookiees came next, throwing their heads back and roaring for the holocams, marching to the far side of the room and standing guard behind the prisoner. Last came the household Niktos, their reputation diminished in that they had failed not only to protect their former master, but also to capture the designated assassin. These unfortunate bodyguards lined up behind Zonnos and the Twi’leks.
Zonnos was dressed in a cape of gold scales, though Reen
did not know if this was a symbol of mourning or power among the Hutts. His blue-tinged face was a maze of engorged blood vessels, darkened to a violet shade by Tempest use. The veins seemed to throb as she watched, and violet pus collected at the corners of the Hutt’s wide eyes. He was deep in the throes of a Tempest binge, Reen realized, striving hard to maintain the façade of calmness. He oozed his way up a short platform to a dais that allowed him to tower over the Pantoran.
The left side of Reen’s face was swollen, but her eyes blazed with anger at the Hutt. She refused to be intimidated, even at this point. Above her a swirling constellation of disintegrators hovered, installed specifically to carry out instantaneously the will of Mighty Zonnos.
A toady she had not seen before—a huge-headed, multi-eyed Vuvrian—strode forward with a massive two-handed club in its insectile claws. For a moment Reen wondered if she would have to fight this minion one-on-one, but the being slammed the base of the club against the floor and let out a stream of enthusiastic Huttese. The Vuvrian could be a lawyer for the prosecution, stating the charges against her, or some courtier extolling the virtues of the late Popara—or just sucking up to Zonnos. Whatever his role, he was taking his time about it, and threatening to pull all the oxygen from the room.
Reen wondered if that was a method of Hutt execution: boring the accused to death. Despite her battered state, she smiled at the idea. Mander would like the concept. Zonnos caught the smile and glowered at her, interrupting the Vuvrian and bellowing something incomprehensible at her. Oily spittle dripped from his lips as he flung insults and accusations at her.
Reen looked the Hutt square in the eye and recited the only Huttese that she knew. It was short and obscene and made scandalous reference to both Zonnos’s bathroom and his dining habits, equating the two.
